Cross-Cultural Perspectives

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Even with this collaboration, Nike had vast setbacks in achieving the organization’s goals of instilling their ethics on the international suppliers. Some of the setbacks include the lack of freedom of association and collective bargaining, extreme working hours, safety issues, problems with wages and harassment to mention a few. These challenges are the differences in ethical perspectives in the United States and the regions where these suppliers operate. One example is working excessive hours in these foreign factories. In the U.S. our culture demands an increase in pay relative to the overtime of a 40-hour week, while in foreign countries they welcome working an 80-hour week due to lower wages and the need to care for their families. Unfortunately, in these countries, it basically comes down to working extreme hours or not having a job. The laws in the U.S. prohibit this from happening here, whereas some foreign countries do not have these laws, and in combination on how factories are managed this work behavior becomes a normal lifestyle. Another example and characteristic of business practices within the Unites States is the time an organization takes to train their employees. The management of Nike’s suppliers has a different perspective on training; they tend to have more of a “what do I get out of it” mentality. Some of these overseas companies will stop training when they see the employee is not adding any value to the company. Nike took their cultural perspective differences into consideration and has worked closely with their suppliers to make certain there is a proper design of a code of social responsibility. The efforts of Nike have already revealed a better arrangement of ethical perspectives between the different beliefs, which in turn has increased the factory production rate with the same number of employees.

In conclusion, Nike may have done some things which can be deemed as being unethical and unmoral. But on the other hand, the company has been working diligently on correcting their bad business choices. Nike has developed programs which help children become active by supporting sport and physical activities in schools and giving more kids a chance to play youth sports. They also have the Nike community impact fund, Nike school innovation fund, designed to move, the girl effect, and Hurley and waves for water just to name a few.

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References

Boggan, S. (2001, October). 'We Blew It': Nike Admits to Mistakes Over Child Labor. Retrieved from http://commondreams.org/headlines01/1020-01.htm

Nike. (2005, April). NIKE ISSUES FY04 CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY REPORT. Retrieved from http://news.nike.com/news/nike-issues-fy04-corporate-responsibility-report

Nike. (2010). Nike, Inc. CODE of CONDUCT. Retrieved from http://www.nikeresponsibility.com/report/uploads/files/Nike_Code_of_Conduct.pdf

Nike. (2016). What We Do. Retrieved from http://about.nike.com/pages/community-impact

Nisen, M. (2013, May). How Nike Solved Its Sweatshop Problem. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/how-nike-solved-its-sweatshop-problem-2013-5

O'Reilly, L. (2014, November). 11 Things Hardly Anyone Knows About Nike. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-nike-facts-about-its-50th-anniversary-2014-11